Our Work

Our Aims

As on organisation, Level aims to engage medical students, medical professionals, faculty, and regulatory bodies in a discussion of gender based issues in medical education and training, including but not limited to:

Barriers to female presence, participation and leadership in all stages of medical training and practice

Sexual harassment

Broader gender issues relevant to the health and medical sector including abortion law reform

Level aims to change the conversation around women in medicine, but we strongly believe that in order for progress to be achieved, everyone, including men, needs to work together to create gender equality, for the benefit of all sexes. We want to challenge society’s views of masculinity, and the issues these views create for men and women in their careers and personal lives. Through Level’s work, we want to amplify a conversation that centers on the inequities and challenges that our current system imposes on all genders in separate, yet significant, ways.

Our Research

Most of the statistics available about women in medicine are based on American or European data or regulations. With our amazing Policy Team and Summer Research Fellows, we’re aiming to change that, and are putting together specifically Australian data on gender equity.

Summer Research Fellowships

We’re currently in our second year of offering our successful Level Summer Research Fellowships.

The Audit Project

Our ongoing major research project, The Audit Project, is an audit of gender representation in medical teaching in Australian medical schools.

Despite much progress being made in the last decades, disparity between genders in the medical profession remains a significant issue. Importantly, we recognise that this gender disparity becomes an issue from the very first day of medical school, with students immediately exposed to a “hidden curriculum” which perpetuates existing gender stereotypes and almost invariably includes more male teachers in programs for procedural skills such as surgery. This hidden curriculum reinforces to all students, regardless of gender, the pre-existing, entrenched and gendered nature of specialisation within medicine.

Our study will be the first of its kind in Australia, with no previous studies having been conducted of this nature.

Read more about The Audit Project here. If you’d like to conduct an Audit at your own medical school, get in touch.

Our Events

Australia is full of incredible doctors and medical students who are breaking down gender barriers. What could be better than getting some of them together to inspire students and younger doctors, and talk about their experiences? Our past successful events include a panel looking at ways to change the medical culture to reduce barriers for women, and another on what it’s like to be a woman in surgery.

Our Workshops

Although you might believe in our work, it can be really tricky to fight for gender equity in your day-to-day life, especially if it involves you being the most junior person in the hospital. That’s where our workshops come in! They’re designed to arm you with conversational tools and strategies to best manage conflict in hospital and the medical workplace…plus they’re really great fun.

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Level acknowledges that we work and study on country that was stolen from Indigenous traditional owners. We respect the rich Indigenous traditions of learning and teaching that predate white colonisation. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land